|9780822948346|The Correspondence, November 1875-December 1877|The fifteenth volume of The Correspondence of John Tyndall contains 466 letters covering the period from November 1875 to December 1877. Tyndall was by now an established man of science with a far-reaching reputation. The most significant work he undertook in this period involved his experiments on spontaneous generation and his consulting for Trinity House on lighthouse illuminations and sound-signaling. Alongside these projects, he married Louisa Hamilton in a small ceremony in London on February 29, 1876. This event offers a brief respite from the intense scientific and technical communications that dominate his life in the…

|9780822948841|Ethnographic Expeditions and the Rise of Anthropology|A man of many talents—naturalist, geographer, anthropologist, and political commentator—Alfred Russel Wallace made seminal contributions to science in the nineteenth century. With Wallace in the Field, Victor Rafael Limeira-DaSilva unpacks the early life of one of the most beloved and famous Victorian scientific figures. Focusing on Wallace’s significant contribution to the emergence of anthropology, Limeira-DaSilva traces the peripatetic trajectory of Wallace’s field work, from his humble beginnings in the suburbs of London to his travels through the Brazilian Amazon and Asia. Challenging traditional portrayals that cast Wallace as Darwin’s sidekick or a casual ethnographer,…

|9780822967941|Ethnographic Expeditions and the Rise of Anthropology|A man of many talents—naturalist, geographer, anthropologist, and political commentator—Alfred Russel Wallace made seminal contributions to science in the nineteenth century. With Wallace in the Field, Victor Rafael Limeira-DaSilva unpacks the early life of one of the most beloved and famous Victorian scientific figures. Focusing on Wallace’s significant contribution to the emergence of anthropology, Limeira-DaSilva traces the peripatetic trajectory of Wallace’s field work, from his humble beginnings in the suburbs of London to his travels through the Brazilian Amazon and Asia. Challenging traditional portrayals that cast Wallace as Darwin’s sidekick or a casual ethnographer,…

|9780822948575|The Correspondence, January 1878-November 1881|The 500 letters in this sixteenth volume of The Correspondence of John Tyndall document the period from January 1, 1878, to December 31, 1881. They chart a defining stage in the later life and career of an aging John Tyndall with unprecedented detail. Key developments evidence the fragility of a self-fashioned Carlylean hero, one whose sustenance increasingly relied on the companionate, domestic partnership that he enjoyed with his wife, Louisa. While they vacationed in the new summer home they built together in the Swiss Alps, where they experienced a shared reverence for nature, Louisa immersed herself…

|9780822968153|The Theoretical Biology Club and the Roots of Epigenetics|As scientists debated the nature of life in the nineteenth century, two theories predominated: vitalism, which suggested that living things contained a “vital spark,” and mechanism, the idea that animals and humans differed from nonliving things only in their degree of complexity. Erik L. Peterson tells the forgotten story of the pursuit of a Third Way in biology, known by many names, including “the organic philosophy,” which gave rise to C. H. Waddington’s work in the subfield of epigenetics: an alternative to standard genetics and evolutionary biology that captured the attention of…